"Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change." -Ralph Waldo Emer

Tomorrow is sports day here in Iwakuni. Sports day, in case you don't know, is where the people from Iwakuni and the people from Sasebo get together and have a friendly competition to build camaraderie. I did not know what sports day was until recently either, so don't feel bad. Sports day got me thinking about friendly competition and camaraderie, and what I came up with is that the friendly part in competition is a difficult and foreign concept to me.

Most people are good with a basic competition that results in a winner and a loser, and then the competition is over and we move on with our lives. There is nothing basic about competitions for me. Competition is life, and life should never be basic.

Growing up there was a lot of competition. My parents believed in healthy competition to motivate us or something. My father never let us win...at ANYTHING! He would cream us at trivial pursuit, in order to push us to work harder to win. Something that never happened in my lifetime, the winning part, not the working harder. My mother even took it so far as to make tic tac toe a mind game, where we had to play it with numbers and a board that was in our heads. She clams it was to work on our working memory, but I just think it was a ploy to always win. I used this same ploy with nieces and nephews, because we all need to win at air tic tac toe sometime in our lives. I was able to beat my siblings, some of them at least, but god forbid I lost, or even worst, tied. There is one sibling that the competition, for a while, never seemed to fade away. My brother Mark. He frequently, until recently would challenge me whenever we played a board game or any game as a family. By challenge, I don't mean trying to win, I mean that if I gave a response he had to argue why I could be wrong. This was always infuriating for me, mostly because i hate to be wrong, and I hate to lose.

Mark is anything but basic. He is opinionated, but he is also educated enough to back up his opinions, which is a rarity with most people. Despite the fact that he is often a giant pain when we are hanging out, I admire SOME of his qualities....arguing with me is not one I enjoy!

Mark is an outdoorsman. He fishes, hunts, camps, hikes and generally spends most of his time in nature. He is strong, intelligent and crafty. He has many great qualities, but he also has a big mouth, which can negate some of the other qualities. I appreciate his love for nature, and his care for the environment. He is probably one person with a very low carbon foot print.

Mark, like many people in my family has had his own personal demons to fight, and sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose. Right now he is in his own battle, that I will not talk about because it is not mine to tell, but I hope that as he fights through this, that he ignores the idea of friendly competition, and he goes all out Babson style.

Today i am making pumpkin spice cupcakes (with actual pumpkin, none of this spice cake crap) for sports day tomorrow, but also for my not so basic, basic brother Mark. Hopefully, next year at this time I will be able to make you some. Even if you don't really eat sweets, you will have to try them, because the cinnamon whipped cream is pretty freaking spectacular. Good luck and kick ass!

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter-soft

1 1/2 cups sugar

*cream butter and sugar together in mixer, use whisk attachment

4 eggs

*Crack and add into sugar/butter mixture

2 tsps vanilla extract

2 tsps all spice

2 tsps nutmeg

1 tsp ginger

2 tbsps cinnamon

*Add all spices to mixer and mix well

3/4 cup milk

2 1/2 tsps baking powder

2 cups pureed pumpkin (I used the already canned kind)

*add to mixture and allow to fully mix

2 1/2 cups flour

*Add to batter 1/2 cup at a time, allowing to mix as you go.

*This is a thicker batter, so don't be alarmed.

*Bake at 350 F/175 C for about 25-30 minutes, mini cupcakes take about 15 minutes.

*The batter is thicker, so you can basically fill the cupcake foils, as they will not rise as much as thinner batters.

Cinnamon Whipped Topping

One pint Heavy whipping cream

*In mixer with whisk attachment, whip on high until hard peaks form.

*add in 2 tsps vanilla, 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, 3 tbsps cinnamon (or more to taste).

*Mix until hard peaks

*Let chill at least 30 minutes

*Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

*Baker's notes:

I added orange food dye to the frosting to make it look a little pumpkin-esque. You can also make a jack-o-lantern with chocolate chips. I am splitting the whipped topping for two different batches of cupcakes, so you may only need half of what I made. Also, I think that i have finally tamed my oven and it has decided to stop acting like a microwave. These cupcakes baked up perfectly at 175 C for 15 minutes (I did mini ones)! Enjoy the not basic pumpkin spice cupcakes!